


Top of the World

by Vera



Category: Astronaut RPF
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Female Jewish Character, Gen, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-14
Updated: 2011-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:18:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vera/pseuds/Vera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's day 3, mission STS-41-D and mission specialist Judy Resnik is up before reveille.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Top of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



One thing Judy likes about her job is that she’s paid to be meticulous. No detail is too small to obsess over. No tolerance too fine. Okay, there’s a limit. There has to be a limit or nothing would ever get made. But if she made the case, the tolerance would be smaller. NASA is like a battalion of grandmothers fussing over their favorite grandchild. She knows her fellow engineers wouldn’t appreciate the comparison. They prefer a macho analogy. From her position by the window, she smiles over at the poster on her locker door: Tom Selleck and his gorgeous, silly moustache.

Today is the day she discovers if she was sufficiently meticulous. Today she will get to play with OAST-1, she will unfurl the solar wing again and watch its panels sparkle in the sunlight. There’s a satellite to launch and —

There’s a lot to do in a shuttle day.

She shakes herself, waking up properly, and feels her hair floating around her head. She keeps her body still, lets her arms stretch out as if she were floating in water and feels a panel cool and smooth under her fingertips. Her stomach trembles like butterflies and then stills. It’s not the weightlessness, it’s the awareness of where she is. A feeling of born of those butterflies, both strange and familiar, sweeps up over her skin, dizzying and light. She’s expanding, just like the universe. Outside _Discovery’s_ window, the sun is rising again, the thin violet band across the arc of the Earth brightening as _Discovery_ hurtles through its orbit. Soon, Earth’s day will appear, the bright, beautiful satellite’s eye view of home. Somewhere down there, Dad was thinking about her, proud and worried. _Don’t worry, Dad. It’s just another day at work. Run through some tests, write it down, do it again. In an office one hundred and eighty-four miles high. ___

The speakers crackle and the capsule fills with the Karen Carpenter’s sweet voice, this morning’s reveille. Mike snorts awake, Henry sings out ‘Good morning’ and it’s time to go to work.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear opalmatrix, thank you for introducing me to Judy Resnik. What a smart, funny, fabulous, inspirational woman.
> 
> Images credit: NASA.


End file.
